Sunday, July 15, 2012

Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 16th July, 2012.

Here are a few I have come across the last week or so.

Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.

General Comment

A week late, but we were able to register this week for a NEHRS / PCEHR and it seem we now have 1/10000 individuals registered. It will take a good while before the ‘network effect’ kicks in and the record is actually useful at this rate.

Otherwise the announcement on mental e-health is really a good thing at the top level. I hope the implementation is also well conducted.

Many other topics covered - with some very interesting information on a e-Health system is Israel.

That’s the number of people who signed up last week to the government’s new program to slash the cost of our medical spending.

It was a very soft launch for the Personally Controlled E-Health Record but the motivation behind it is right. An easily accessible database that ensures medical professionals have access to all of our medical activities should, if utilised correctly, reduce the enormous amount of waste and duplicate activities that drain federal and state health budgets. It also should help reduce mistakes caused by patients forgetting what previous symptoms they’ve had or drugs they’ve taken.

Only 320 people signed up for an electronic health record five days after the Federal Government's much anticipated July 1 e-health launch.

With numbers like this, the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record project, which aims to streamline patient medical records to facilitate treatment, is unlikely to meet its own target of registering 500,000 users by July 1 next year.

Australians wanting to consolidate their health records including medications, allergies, immunisations, doctors’ and hospital notes and prescriptions, can apply online at ehealth.gov.au.

A slow, incomplete start was predicted in May for Australia's most ambitious e-health project to date.

For months, the AMA has been warning the government that the PCEHR is not ready. Patients are not ready. Doctors and other health professionals are not ready. Hospitals are not ready. The health system is not ready.

I was one of a group of GP leaders who met with Health Minister Tanya Plibersek just before the launch to explain in person our concerns about the lack of readiness for the PCEHR.

We told her we want the PCEHR to work. We want it to work for our patients and for ourselves. We see the electronic health record as a key productivity tool in health.

PRESSURE is building for the Auditor-General to examine the cost and performance of parties involved in the Gillard government's personally controlled e-health record program after a dismal launch last week.

Opposition e-health spokesman Andrew Southcott said that given "almost $1 billion of taxpayers' money has been spent or allocated for this in the past two years, it would be prudent for the Australian National Audit Office to examine the PCEHR program".

IT projects were "notorious for costing a lot more than expected and delivering a lot less than expected, and this seems to be in that category".

The government has been urged to focus its attention on developing secure messaging systems for GPs and other doctors in the wake of last week’s jittery e-health records system launch.

Shadow parliamentary secretary for primary healthcare Dr Andrew Southcott told MO the government should have spent the past two years developing secure messaging and other “incremental steps” rather than going for the “big bang, blockbuster approach” by launching e-health records.

Dr Southcott said he would write to the Attorney General to ask that the Australian National Audit Office examine how the government had spent “almost $1 billion” developing the records system.

ALMOST all the functionality of the new personally controlled e-health record system is delayed until at least August, the National E-Health Transition Authority's head of the PCEHR program admitted four days before the go-live.

"At the moment, we are in the final stages of the production build-out and final verification testing," Andrew Howard told a vendors' webinar on June 27.

"Everything is on track for a successful launch (of the consumer portal and online registration system) over the weekend."

But Mr Howard said plans for the release of the provider portal were not yet settled.

Although that is indeed the aim of modern electronic health systems, the PCEHR is a repository containing a static, point-in-time medical summary uploaded by your GP, and possibly a few "event summaries" from other practitioners.

Australian Doctor is developing a new online community exclusively for doctors called just4docs.

Many of you already comment on the Australian Doctor website or talk about our stories with colleagues. In the near future you will be able to continue that dialogue on a secure social network called just4docs.

Over recent months, a small group of GPs has been helping this secure doctor-only community take shape. The time has now come to widen the conversation and if you want to be the first in line to join, we would love you to register your interest.

Israel's largest health provider offers e-health services to 3.8 million users, giving patients and doctors the opportunity to interact.

While the Federal Government struggles to get its e-health service off the ground, a similar service in Israel is treating over a million people each month.

Clalit, Israel’s largest provider of health services, launched its e-health wing in 2009, with patients and doctors able to interact through multiple layers of online services.

The service gives Clalit’s 3.8 million patients access to their full medical record — including diagnoses, lab results with simple explanations, and current prescriptions — and allows doctors to easily share those records with specialists and other health professionals.

A MELBOURNE GP, fed up with not being able to find a specialist to conduct telehealth consultations, has launched a free website designed to connect doctors via the Skype video-conferencing program.

The website allows practitioners interested in telehealth to register their specialty, location and Skype address; search the resulting database for others to connect with; browse registered practitioners with an interactive map; and features a forum and instant messaging.

The creator, Dr Jonathan Brown, said he had received dozens of registrations in the first week and he hoped the site would help other GPs struggling to make telehealth consultations.

Often viewed as a pipedream, eHealth is finally making its way out of the realm of imagination and into reality. But is the hype surrounding eHealth justified? PATRICK BUDMAR finds out.

As advancements continue to be made with computer technology, and the Internet becomes more commonplace in our daily work and private lives, transformation is expected to occur in many traditional work sectors.

For example, the retail industry underwent some growing pains in recent years as it was pulled into the digital age, along with the music and film industry. Another sector that is expected to follow in their footsteps is the healthcare industry under the oft quoted “eHealth” moniker.

Comment: Note that the article really does not answer the question it poses as far as I can tell.

HEALTH Minister Lawrence Springborg has ambushed Queensland's Labor Opposition on the floor of parliament, demanding it authorise the release of confidential Cabinet documents.

Former Liberal National Party leader Mr Springborg called a snap motion this morning, calling for Opposition leader Annastacia Palaszczuk to hand over legal advice to the government assessing potential financial recovery options for the health payroll debacle before the next parliamentary sitting.

The motion was passed using the LNP's huge majority.

The previous Bligh government obtained legal advice on its options over the botched implementation of the IBM-WorkBrain payroll system, which the Auditor-General last year deemed the worst state government failure he had reported.

Tim Barlass

A MEDICAL device that could saves the lives of millions of Third World children is the Australian entry in an international competition to find software solutions to global problems.

The digital stethoscope is attached to a smartphone, which listens to and digitises a pneumonia patient's breathing sounds and patterns. Those patterns are then compared against a medical database using cloud technology to deliver an automated diagnosis and treatment plan via an app on the smartphone.

The Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) is seeking a data centre construction partner to build a new facility as it prepares for increased storage needs, according to a request for information.

The new data centre will house a hierarchical storage management (HSM) offering and server infrastructure. According to tender documents, a suitable room has been found at QIMR but a fit out is needed to turn the room into a data centre.

The current buzz around ‘big data’ is almost enough to give the ‘cloud’ a run for its money but amid the grand promises that seem to accompany every piece of technology a clear definition of just what makes data ‘big’ can be hard to find.

Well, the simplest description would be that if the amount of data that you need to process exceeds the capability of your database systems, you’ve got big data. This may seem a tad simplistic but it is accurate. Volume is really the name of the game given the massive amount of data generated and collected by organisations every day.

This volume is closely aligned to the other two Vs in this equation – velocity and variety. Velocity refers to the speed at which the data can be analysed and variety points to the multitude of data points from where the information is flowing in.

Dylan Welch and Ben Grubb

THE Gillard government has defended a plan to force telcos to store the internet and phone data of all Australians for up to two years, saying it is needed to allow our intelligence and police agencies to effectively target organised criminals and terrorists.

''In this day and age, an age where governments all around the world are grappling with the challenges of terrorism and organised crime, it is important that our relevant agencies have access to the information that they need,'' the assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury, said.